“Hillary Clinton’s numbers have dropped among voters in the key swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Virginia. She has lost ground in the horserace and on key questions about her honesty and leadership,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “On being a strong leader, a key metric in presidential campaigns, she has dropped four to 10 points depending on the state and she is barely above 50 percent in each of the three states.”

“Against three Republicans, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Secretary Clinton trails in six matchups and is on the down side of too-close-to call in three,” Brown added.

“That’s compared to the April 9 Quinnipiac University poll in which she was clearly ahead in five of the matchups and too-close-to-call in the other four. One other key takeaway is that Vice President Joseph Biden, who is considering a 2016 run, does better than Clinton on honesty and on caring about voter needs, always a key Democratic strong point.”

“Hillary Clinton’s numbers have dropped among voters in the key swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Virginia. She has lost ground in the horserace and on key questions about her honesty and leadership,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “On being a strong leader, a key metric in presidential campaigns, she has dropped four to 10 points depending on the state and she is barely above 50 percent in each of the three states.”

Another remarkable result is that both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden had comparable results to Clinton against Republican opponents. Clinton typically did the same or was a couple of percentage points better, but she is on a downward trajectory. There is considerable risk that her support will fall further as more people understand the severity of her ethical misconduct as Secretary of State, and better understand her views. On the other hand, Sanders remains relatively unknown and Biden has not even entered the race. Both stand to improve with campaigning and in debating Clinton.

Polls at this stage have limited predictive value and this is not to say that Clinton cannot win these battleground states if she wins the nomination. What this does do is contradict the argument from many Clinton supporter that Democrats should back her, despite her ethical faults and conservative positions on many issues, because of feeling she has the best chance of beating the Republicans. Democrats would be much better off nominating a candidate whose campaign is not at great risk of being derailed by ethical charges, and there is no need to compromise on a candidate who is not all that much more liberal than Jeb Bush on many issues. As Common Dreams posted earlier this week, Hillary Clinton Is No Progressive.

6 Comments

There is no other poll showing her doing worse than Sanders. You can't ignore the other polls showing her running 10 points ahead of him and claim he's the one. A lot of people have noticed issues with this poll, even conservative ones (Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics)

You are ignoring the trend. This and other polls are showing support for Clinton falling and support for Sanders rising. Sanders just got into the race recently. Clinton has been known for years. It is Sanders who has the upside potential. If he is already polling about as well as Clinton, he looks like a much better bet for the general election.

Criticism such as you cite are the exact same type of arguments partisans always use to attack polls with unfavorable results for their candidate. This is the same sort of logic which Republicans used to claim they were going to beat Obama.

You gave no meaningful facts to refute, just some nonsense to deny the actual facts.

You are also misstating the results of the Public Policy Polling survey. It shows Clinton falling and Sanders rising.

You are also comparing apples and oranges. The Quinnipiac poll is of battleground states. It doesn’t matter how Clinton does in national polls if she is struggling in the battleground states. Clinton doing better than Sanders at this point in time in this poll doesn’t mean much when she is on the decline and Sanders is on the rise. What matters is not where they are today but where they are on election day.

What part of "Clinton is in pretty good shape when it comes to potential general election match ups as well. She leads all of the potential Republican candidates by anywhere from 3 to 13 points, comparable to a month ago when her advantages over them ranged from 3 to 7 points. " don't you understand?